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You Have to Start Somewhere

As I’ve decided to go down the road of garment sewing this year, I think it best to start out right. And by right I mean to actually acquire the ability to alter a store bought pattern to fit MY body - not the idealized body that doesn’t really exist. I figure to do this I should start out with a sloper that is an accurate representation of my shape (as scary as that is). Now, HOW do I do this?

I’ve been researching on the net (oh how I LOVE the Internet…) the myriad ways of creating a sloper. I have to tell you, my head hurts right now at the thought of trying to accomplish this. I know I’m probably just making a mountain out of a molehill, but like I said in a previous posts, dressmakers patterns make me nervous and the thought of actually making my own, well, that just freaks me out. Isn’t it strange how I feel so intimidated by garment patterns but I can tackle the absolute hardest of quilting block patterns with hardly the blink of an eye from drafting my own mariners compass to all the curves involved in putting together an apple core pattern. No sweat. However the thought of trying to mimic the contours of my own breasts using a flat paper pattern is just Mt Everest to me! I need a glass of wine for this….

I picked up my Singer 151 dressmakers dummy last night. She’s now standing in my living room (which scared the crap out of my husband this morning when he got up and walked to the kitchen as he’d forgotten I’d left it there LOL) patiently waiting for me to turn all her knobs and dials to just the right combination to represent me. Well, at least to kinda represent me as I’m certain I’ll do some padding here and there to really get the measurements just right. This leads me back to my discussion on a sloper. In reading all the ways sewers have customized their dummies many stressed the need for an accurate sloper as their first line of business in the process. Once a muslin of your body can be created, it’s a matter of putting that sloper onto your padded dummy to make a more workable dressmakers dummy from the a dial-a-measurement standard.